followed Neary in.
The inner office was larger than the outer one, and was graced by a dirt-fogged window, but it was no less crowded and smelled even worse. It too was lined with file cabinets, and all of them were topped by dusty heaps of newspapers and magazines. To the right was another big workstation, perched on a frail-looking card table, and in the corner was a half-sized refrigerator with a coffeemaker on top. In the center of the room was a scarred oak desk. Its surface was obscured by layers of file folders and newspapers and glossy catalogs, and by an immense glass ashtray that overflowed with cigarette butts and spent matches. In front of the desk were two plastic guest chairs, and wedged behind it was the man I took to be Marty Czerka.
He was spread out in his green leather chair like a toad on a lily pad. His big head was liver-spotted and mostly bald, and the fringe of hair at the sides was coarse and gray. His skin was mottled pink and white; it fell in deep folds around his eyes and meaty nose and flowed over his shirt collar. More gray hair bristled over his hooded blue eyes and above his thick upper lip.
His shirt had once been white, and from its size it might also once have been a spinnaker. Now it had French cuffs and gold cuff links shaped like little nightsticks. A stained yellow tie hung limply down its front, the knot obscured by Czerka’s double chin. His pale hands were veined and speckled, and his fingers looked like bad sausage. He stubbed out a cigarette, and ash dribbled over the sides of the ashtray. He looked at Neary and his thick brows came together.
“Neary, right- ex-Feeb, with Brill?” he said. Neary nodded.
Czerka shifted his big head and looked at me. There was a spark of recognition and surprise in his hooded eyes, but he doused it quickly and put on a game face of indifference and lethargy. It was deftly done. He looked back to Neary.
“Who’s he?” he asked.
Neary smiled and sat in one of the guest chairs. I sat in the other. Czerka didn’t seem to mind not getting an answer to his question. He found a cigarette in the wreckage of his desk and lit it with a wooden match. He sighed in some smoke and coughed wetly. He rolled the cough around in his throat and savored it, as if it were the best part of smoking.
“You’re not on my calendar today,” Czerka said.
“I thought I’d drop in,” Neary said, “just on the off chance.”
Czerka nodded. “Sure,” he said slowly. He looked at me again. “And you?” I smiled and said nothing.
“I thought maybe you could help me out, Marty,” Neary said.
Czerka took another drag and coughed a little more. “Help,” he said absently. He shifted in his seat, and a greasy popping sound issued from somewhere below his desk. A moment later, a noxious sulfurous smell filled the room. Charming. I looked at Neary, who kept on talking.
“I have a friend who’s feeling a little bit crowded lately.”
“Crowded, huh? What, he needs a bigger apartment? Or a laxative maybe?” Czerka’s blue eyes glittered. He cleared his throat loudly and for a long time. “You the friend?” he asked me, when he finished. I was quiet. Neary ignored the question too.
“We’re in the market for a name, Marty,” he said. “We can buy it or swap for it or whatever, and nobody has to know where we got it from.”
Czerka played one of his fat fingers along the edge of his mustache and then slid it into his nose. “What name?” he said finally.
Neary was full of elaborate disappointment. “Come on, Marty. The name of whoever’s paying for the small army you’ve got on the street these days.”
Czerka treated himself to another drag and another ripe cough and was about to speak when the outer door opened and banged shut. There were heavy footsteps and a man stood at the office door.
He was young, no more than twenty-five, and medium height, but with the neck and shoulders of a serious gym rat. He wore shiny gray warm-up pants and a black T-shirt from someplace called the Platinum Playpen, and a heavy odor of sweat and leathery cologne preceded him. His dirty-blond hair was buzz-cut on his small head, and his eyes were pale and vague and set close below a bony brow. The left eye was blackened. There was a bandage across his pulpy nose, stitches at the corner of his undersized mouth, and bruising along his jaw. There were foam-and-metal splints on three fingers of his left hand. He held a couple of paper bags in his right, and he put them on Czerka’s desk.
“I got the smokes, Uncle Marty, and the sandwich and the lottery tickets,” he said. His voice was cracking and adolescent. He looked at us and wondered who we were, and it seemed like a lot of work for him. He fixed his gaze on me, and after a while a dim light came into his eyes. He didn’t try to hide it, or even realize that he should. There was irritation on Czerka’s face and in his voice.
“Yeah, great work, Stevie. Now go watch the front room- and close the door behind you.”
Stevie stared at us harder, in what I realized was supposed to be a tough look. “You got a problem here, Uncle Marty? Something I could help with?”
“Go!” Czerka barked. Stevie colored but did as he was told. Czerka stubbed out his smoke and looked at Neary and chuckled. It was moist and mocking.
“Since when are we such old pals that you waltz in here calling me Marty? And since when do I give a shit about you or your friends or their problems or whatever the hell you’re in the market for? You may not be a Feeb anymore, but you still got that Feeb attitude, that’s for damn sure.”
He took a loud breath and laughed some more.
“You got a lot of fucking nerve coming in here, thinking I got something to sell you. What, you think you’re the only stand-up guys in the world? You think the rest of us lowlifes are just looking for a chance to roll on a client?” Czerka got winded and his laughter dissolved into a racking cough.
Neary nodded at him. “I didn’t realize your sensibilities were so refined, Marty,” he said. “You have my deepest apologies. And now we can talk cash money, or I’ve got some business I could push your way, or we could do some of each. Or maybe you’re interested in something else. But if you are, you’ve got to tell me, because I can’t read minds.” Neary paused and smiled. “So, do you want to do yourself some good here or not?”
Czerka flicked at us dismissively and dug through the bags on his desk. He pulled a brick-sized package in white butcher’s paper from one, tore back the wrapping, and hoisted a sloppy pastrami on rye to his mouth. Grease bled down his hands and left his chin and mustache wet, and the smell of meat and fat rose to mingle with the other delicate aromas in the room. He put the sandwich down and pulled a cigarette from somewhere and lit it even as he chewed, open-mouthed, on the pastrami. Jesus.
“Forget it, Neary,” he said, and bits of food fell from his mouth to the desk. “Your pockets aren’t deep enough to make it worth the trouble.” He glanced at me and shook his head. “Even his aren’t deep enough. Now get the fuck out of here and let me eat my lunch.” He picked up his sandwich again.
Neary looked at me and shrugged. I took a deep breath and tried not to choke. I spoke quietly. “Mesmerizing as it is to sit here while you smoke and fart and smear yourself with lard, I’d be more than happy to go get myself steam-cleaned and leave you in peace, believe me. But I’ve got a client who’d really like to know what’s going on, and frankly so would I. I know you don’t give a shit about who wants what, but my client has some resources, and I do too, so maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss. Maybe you should get your brains out of your fat ass and reconsider.”
Czerka stared at me, his sandwich poised above his desk. He was quiet and his blue eyes were hard beneath their folded lids. Red patches spread over his cheeks, and his shoulders and fat arms began to shake, and then a gurgling sound came from his open mouth. Czerka put his sandwich down and shook and laughed for almost a minute, until his face grew dark and there was a hissing in his breath. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Son of a bitch!” Czerka laughed, “Fucking steam-cleaned, huh?” He looked at Neary. “See- your pal thinks I’m dog shit, just like you do, but he comes out and says it. He can barely stand to breathe the same air as me, but he puts it right out there. I got to say, I kind of like that. But sweet talk won’t get you into my pants, March.” He looked at me as he said my name, but I managed to keep my composure. Czerka laughed a little more and took hold of his sandwich again. After a while he glanced up.
“Door’s right there, boys,” he said.
We walked out of Czerka’s office, past Stevie and his bandages. He tried to give us another hard stare as we went by, but it came off looking like constipation.
